Contemporary Manifestations of Yemeni-Derived Song and Dance in Indonesia

Abstract

particularly in Java, is comparatively reticent when compared to its more assertive expression in neighboring countries, but this should not obscure its fundamental presence and importance. In this paper, I will report on my ongoing exploration of gambus, an Indonesian performance complex of Yemeni derivation with prominent place in Indonesian Islamic culture. The primary emphasis placed by musical scholars on the orchestral traditions and the varied ethnic traditions of Indonesia, and the ambiguous relationship of Islam to the performing arts, have combined to marginalize for us an awareness of the pervasive influence Islamic culture has had on Indonesia's musical performing arts. In the words of the anthropologist Robert Hefner (1987:93), is largely because of . . . tacit repression of Java's social and aesthetic diversity that . . . Java's Islamic aesthetic traditions have been so little studied. His work on East Javanese tiedeks, the professional singing-dancing girls traditionally associated with elite festivities during village purifications and spirit worship, has demonstrated the importance of bringing the Islamic elements in such aesthetic traditions from the margins into more central focus; recovering for us the tiedeks' connection with Islamic cultural influence in the past and examining their contested place in Islamically oriented cultural policy in the present, he has made their history more complete and meaningful. Recent ethnomusicological scholarship, too, particularly that dealing with the high of Asia, has begun to take greater cognizance of the musical diversity in these cultures by examining their popular musics. It was the historian, William Frederick, however, who more than decade ago pointed out that the Indonesian pop song genre dangdut was a sensitive